NEALE COOPER 1963-2018
Pain floods Pittodrie as Cooper, the youngest of Aberdeen’s legends of Gothenburg, dies aged 54
THE youngest member of Aberdeen’s Gothenburg Greats, Neale Cooper, died yesterday. He was just 54. Born in Darjeeling, India, in 1963 while his father Douglas managed a tea plantation, the young Cooper pitched up at his new school on the return of his family to Aberdeenshire speaking Hindi.
But he wasted no time communicating eloquently to his new classmates via the international language of football.
At primary school in Airyhall, janitor Ernie Youngston watched the six-year-old kick a ball about the fields on his own and quickly recognised his precocious talents.
Becoming a mentor, Youngston placed Cooper on the road to glory by introducing him to legendary Aberdeen coach Teddy Scott, who invited him to train with the Dons in the school holidays.
At 14, Cooper was lining up against players twice his age for the Pittodrie side’s reserves before being handed his first-team debut at 16 by Alex Ferguson for the team he had grown up supporting since his return from India.
‘I was cleaning Ferguson’s office on the Friday, which was part of my duties as groundstaff,’ Cooper recalled in 2016.
‘He said: “Once you’ve done the toilets, you can go. Alex McLeish has hurt his leg. You’re playing tomorrow”. The rest of the groundstaff didn’t believe me. My mum didn’t believe me.
‘And when I turned up at the team hotel the next day, the players just laughed.’
A terrific midfielder, Cooper was athletic and fearless but blessed with incredible poise and technique.
He played in the European Cup against Liverpool also at 16 and was likened to a young Franz Beckenbauer by none other than the German legend himself.
He played a key role in unsettling the old order as Aberdeen under Ferguson went down to Glasgow and successfully took on the Old Firm. In the 1982-83 season, he jack-knifed Celtic’s Charlie Nicholas straight from kick-off, the ball not leaving the centre circle.
‘Fergie had been winding me up about it all week — Nicholas is the man, Nicholas this, Nicholas that,’ he recalled in Michael Grant’s book
‘Kick-off comes and I cement him — the crowd goes mental, I’ve got Roy Aitken in my face, Billy McNeill is going nuts on the touchline and I look at my dugout where Fergie is standing with a huge smile giving me the double thumbs-up.’
Under Ferguson, Cooper won two league titles, four Scottish Cups, a League Cup, the European Cup Winners’ Cup, the Super Cup, but, unfathomably, no Scotland caps. Of those pieces of silverware, the team’s finest moment undoubtedly came in the Swedish rain 35 years ago this month in Aberdeen’s 2-1 Cup Winners’ Cup final victory over Real Madrid in Gothenburg.
At the age of just 19, Cooper put in a mature performance beyond his years in the Ullevi Stadium as goals from Eric Black and John Hewitt secured a famous victory on May 11, 1983.
It remains the last time a Scottish side brought a European trophy home. As has been keenly noted in the wake of Real Madrid’s Champions League final win over Liverpool at the weekend, it is also the last time that the Spanish giants lost a European final.
‘For a 19-year-old to be playing in such a big game, I can’t see it happening again for Aberdeen,’ Cooper said in 2013. ‘People might think I was too young to enjoy it but the whole thing was savoured on the night in Gothenburg.
‘It was fantastic. My family were over, my mum and my sisters. Then came the flight home. And the fans that lined the streets when we returned to Aberdeen.
‘Everyone talks about it. I don’t get fed-up but I don’t think many of us have watched the game itself much. I haven’t needed to. I will never forget beating Real Madrid and what it meant to everyone.’
His talent with a football was undeniable. But Cooper also possessed a love of laughter and nonsense that, while endearing him to his many friends and colleagues, often left Ferguson vexed. Notably, on one occasion when the midfielder reported back to pre-season training in the 1980s with his hair dyed white.
‘Bryan Gunn and I had been on holiday to Ibiza,’ he explained in 2016. ‘It was the time of Wham! So we decided to put peroxide in our hair. Fergie said: “Cooper, what’s that on your head?”. He yanked at my hair — he thought it was a wig. Then he ordered me to the nearest hairdresser. I had to darken the colour before he’d let me back in.’
As the most successful team in Aberdeen’s history broke up, Cooper headed to Aston Villa.
It was a move blighted by injury until Graeme Souness took him to Rangers to play a squad role in a star-studded cast featuring Terry Butcher, Trevor Steven, Mark Walters and the late Ray Wilkins.
Cooper returned to Aberdeen but did not make an appearance before signing for Reading and had a successful spell at Dunfermline, helping the Pars win promotion to the Premier League in 1996.
Like so many of Ferguson’s former players, Cooper went into coaching. After hanging up his boots at Ross County, he took over the Dingwall side and, after two successful promotions, took charge of Hartlepool (twice), Peterhead and then Gillingham. He returned to Ross County as assistant boss in 2012, leaving that role two years later.
Cooper’s dad and grandfather both suffered fatal heart attacks at the ages of just 39 and 40. And last year, Cooper suffered a heart attack himself at the age of 53.
Hundreds of messages flooded to the family home, many addressed to the much-loved ‘Tattie’ (tattie peel — Neale).
Old friends Gordon Strachan, Archie Knox and Andy Roxburgh all got in touch. Ferguson passed on his best wishes via John Hewitt. After surviving last year’s brush with death, Cooper collapsed on Sunday morning.
His death was confirmed yesterday by the club where he cemented his legacy. But his loss is mourned by the whole of Scottish football and beyond.